Tea Party Astroturfs The Clarence Schools Again

It’s that time of year again when the tea party in Clarence decides that it’s time to dismantle some more of the still-sturdy foundation of the school district. This year is better than last, but the town is still replete with awful people doing awful things that have an adverse affect on students, teachers, and the community at large.

“Creative Solutions” for funding schools

Clarence is a small and affluent exurb, and those of us who live there have it better than most. But what happens in right-leaning towns like Clarence today might come to your town tomorrow.

I am a strong believer in quality public education, and I find it difficult to sit back and watch bad people mount a costly PR campaign in order to create problems that are either fictions or that wouldn’t otherwise exist. You shouldn’t manufacture a problem, only to claim credit when you start pushing so-called “solutions”.

In 2013, the school budget was under significant stress because pension costs were untenable due in large part to the financial meltdown of 2008 – 2009. On top of that, the Clarence district had spent down a lot of its reserves in an effort to keep school taxes low, which gave it less leeway in this emergency.

In the end, a new budget was proposed – and passed – within the cap. As a result, teachers were fired en masse, electives were eliminated, clubs cancelled, music curricula slashed, and sports cut. For a school district that prides itself on excellence, it was a devastating loss and crushing defeat.

Parents and local businesses rallied together to raise $200,000 to restore the clubs and sports, but a lot of kids who had navigated a path through high school found that they were in study halls rather than electives they needed. This year, the board unanimously passed a budget that is within the cap of 3.16%, and raises spending by less than 2.5%. The levy is going up to $15/$1000 of assessed value, before STAR and other exemptions.

Thankfully, the fiscal emergency is over – as predicted – and next year’s budget restores lost clubs, sports, and hopefully some electives. There will not, however, be any restoration of teaching positions, nor will the district have any social workers on staff, for the second year in a row. Clarence is one of the wealthiest towns in Erie County; it’s not that it can’t afford quality schools with adequate staff, it’s just decided not to. Yet the equation that made Clarence so attractive over the last couple of decades – quality, top-ranked schools with relatively low taxes – is being adversely affected.

If you do deliberate harm to the school piece, you’re going to see fewer families moving to or staying in town, and that will result in a negative spiral that won’t do anyone any good. The chief exploiters of anti-tax fury in town are a small band of malcontents who call themselves the “Clarence Taxpayers”. Joined by Americans for Prosperity “activists” and the executives at Stephen Development, a local developer and operator of manufactured home parks, the school district and parents have been outspent for a second year in a row by people who do not believe in public education, and who are acting out of sheer self-interest.

I don’t think that strong schools are important just because I happen to have two kids in the system; I think that good schools are important to the town in general – to the community, and to our larger society. I don’t want our future to be any dumber than our present is. I want everyone’s kids to have a quality education, whether my kids are in the system or not.

Part of the problem is that almost every one of the anti-school tea party people have seen their kids go through the system. The “I got mine, screw you” is so loud and palpably clear, and one wonders what greater good is being served with such an attitude. This is the same town that goes “Blue for Ben” and comes together after a plane lands on top of a house.

Worling has reportedly been selling himself in different ways, depending on the audience. To the Bee, and at a recent candidate’s forum, Worling is presenting himself as a school-loving, reasonable guy whose kids just happen to go to a private fundamentalist religious school completely by accident. But to his fellow parishioners at the Chapel at Crosspoint, he’s apparently selling himself as the candidate of “Christian values”. I don’t care what you are, or where your kids go to school, but it would be best if you were honest and consistent with the way in which you portray yourself, and not change who you are, depending on your audience.

Worling has only a financial investment in the Clarence district; he is completely divested from the educational life of the schools. That is his right, but it doesn’t bode well for taxpayers whose kids do attend the schools if he gets in. Remember that fiasco a few weeks ago about banning books? This poses a direct threat to the ELA curriculum the next time somebody comes up with a book with a bad word in it. This is before you get to the fundamental truth that the anti-school people want your kids to go begging in the street for spare change to help fund school programs. This is all about their vision of a third-world public school system run by questionably educated volunteers, in mud huts with no supplies. And when the kids do have to resort to panhandling – as they did last year through the good work of the Clarence Schools Enrichment Foundation (CSEF) – these taxpayer heroes walk right on by, cursing the urchin scum.

In his opening statement, Worling said that Clarence needs excellent schools and teachers, but we need to be careful about budget issues. He added that the community’s seniors must be respected by solving budget issues through what he repeatedly called “creative solutions”.

The candidates were asked what their first priority would be. Worling said he had a list of “creative ideas” that would create “clean revenue”, rather than rely on the taxpayers. No one knows what “clean revenue” means, and it appears to be some sort of obscure management speak,

I’d like to hear some details about what’s “unclean” about the schools’ revenue, which comes from the community through taxes, and the state. The candidates were asked if they had supported the 9.8% budget from last year. Only Mr. Worling opposed the 9.8% budget as being “too far-reaching“. He lamented that no one came up with his patented “creative solutions”, ignoring the fact that he was absent from the entire process and also never suggested any “creative solutions” at the time, when it counted.

He then proceeded gently to lay the blame on the faculty for having the audacity to have reasonable health care and a pension plan. This is the coward’s way – blame the very people who have devoted their lives not just to a job but to a profession requiring a graduate degree, rigorous training, and testing.

These teachers could have gone into the private sector and, e.g., been glorified volunteers like the teachers at private schools, or made tons of money working for private industry in some capacity. Instead they answered the call to educate future generations. There are few professions nobler than this, and they earn – and deserve – good pay and good benefits.

The candidates were asked if the board should more closely protect the interests of taxpayers or students. Worling said we should expand programs in the schools that teach kids real-life lessons, and we should “give them what they need”. He did not explain how that jibes with his opposition to last year’s 9.8% budget and the way in which its defeat did not give students “what they need”, and cut the types of programs he described from the curriculum.

A question about vouchers came up, and Worling wouldn’t say he was for or against schools, but noted that “choice is good” and that “competition is good”. Of course, there is competition. If you want a private education, send your kids to private school. If you don’t like Clarence schools, move someplace else. Lots of choices exist that don’t deliberately allow parents to take their money out of the public school system and subsidize a private entity. The only loser in that scenario is the public system. Vouchers are a great last resort to help kids in a failing system. Clarence’s system is far from failing, but instituting a needless voucher program could likely bring about that result.

Did you know that Clarence has no social workers on staff in any school this year? They were cut in the wake of the defeat of the 9.8% budget. (Donn Esmonde said these were all scare tactics; he was wrong). Here’s a tip: privileged kids from well-to-do homes experience problems, just like poor kids do. Worling gave some story about attending small claims court where parents were arguing and they had kids and maybe the kids might need help. Well, yes. But you supported the defeat of the budget that funded social workers, and now you tell us what, exactly? That we can have it all both ways?

Some dopey question about whether people are undertaxed or overtaxed was asked. No one thinks they’re undertaxed – how dumb. Worling said we should look at costs and whether they’re “sustainable”. He said we should look to other revenue sources. Likewise, when asked about what caused last year’s budget crisis, Kloss, Andrews, and Stock pointed to loss of Albany aid, the global financial crisis, and an aggressive spending of fund balance that left us with little flexibility during the global financial meltdown. Worling blamed the teachers; health care and retirement costs demand “creative solutions”, basically laying all the blame on the people who work hardest and educate the next generation of kids.

Finally, in his closing argument, Worling laid out his prejudices. He said the schools are “run like they were 50 years ago”, and that they should modernize. Query: when was the last time this guy sat in a Clarence classroom? What he means is that we pay teachers a living wage and provide them with benefits that people generally don’t enjoy in the public sector. This is true, to a degree. The reason why this is has to do with attracting and retaining good teachers. Do you attract someone with a mountain of graduate school debt with a minimum wage job with poor benefits? Or do you offer them a solid pension, a good wage, and decent benefits?

The candidates were asked whether they thought people were under or overtaxed. The real question is: do you think that teachers are under or overpaid? Not only for their time actually teaching, but for the afterschool curriculum prep, the disciplinary issues, dealing with parents, preparing kids for standardized tests, revamping everything to comply with new standards, helping kids who need it and praising those who show advancement. This is not like being a cashier at a grocery story – being a teacher means being able to hold a class’ attention on a given topic, having a mastery of a subject, being a surrogate parent, a social worker, a policeman, and confidant. To these people we deny a good living?!

Worling said we need “creativity” but didn’t expound on that. He said we need “clean sources of revenue” without saying what that means. He tried to explain by blaming the town for being unfriendly to business. Really? A town whose supervisor heads up the IDA?

The tea party guy says the schools should create a trust fund of some sort, so that people who want to give more are able to do so. What a cop-out. This character has so much contempt for the schools, parents, and teachers that he would cut spending to the bone, despite saying in an election that he wants to give kids “what they need”.

He would then expect parents to pay, in effect, a surtax to maintain programs that prior generations enjoyed. It is an avenue that leads to the slow and systematic dismantling of public education by people who think it valueless. It is a way to destroy the public school system by rendering it a charity case, always with its hand out, looking for some spare change.

To paraphrase, Richard Worling is telling Clarence parents, “voluntarily pay more if you want to keep music, arts, electives, and clubs”. Never mind that the entire community benefits from an excellent and comprehensive public school curriculum. Never mind that Worling is a real estate agent and should know better than most how school quality goes hand-in-hand with property values.

Never mind that in 2007, Rich Worling paid $6,245 in school taxes on a property assessed at $425,000, or that in 2013, Worling paid $5,992 in school taxes on a property assessed at $440,000.

Tell me which taxpayers are being disrespected, exactly.

Render the schools a beggar, and make parents pay a “voluntary surcharge” to keep critical programs, and you’ve signed a death warrant for not just the schools, but also for the town. There will be a sea of “for Sale” signs as supply overwhelms a shrinking demand, and by the time the damage is done and middle-class families abandon the town for better schools elsewhere, the town will be left with farmers, seniors, and the ultra-wealthy who can afford private education.

Last year, when the 9.8% budget that Worling opposed was defeated, the schools lost a great deal of what made them unique and excellent. We didn’t just lose social workers, but great teachers, electives, clubs, music, sports. Kids who had plans drawn up as a path to get into the college of their dreams – paths that included certain courses, electives, and extracurriculars – suddenly found themselves in study halls.

Parents and businesses had to take up the slack, and raised over $200,000 to restore many of these programs out of their own pocket, in addition to paying their allotment of school taxes. That was the exception. Worling and the so-called “Clarence Taxpayers” vultures want that to be the norm, and he said as much on Tuesday.

Worling? He did not contribute to CSEF. His concern for the education of our kids wasn’t so great that he sought to help restore lost programs. When push came to shove, he abandoned our kids. What makes you think he won’t do it again, if given the chance?

Now, I’m back at it, trying to prevent these horrible people from destroying public education in Clarence as we know it.

When your kids are done with school, will you work actively to dismantle the system that once served your family so well, and deny the same opportunity to current and future generations? Or are you not an awful person?

22 comments

The quality of a community, not to mention a country, is usually directly attributable to the quality of education in that community. It’s not a coincidence that one of the first questions young parents ask a real estate agent is “How good is the school district?”

Unfortunately, many adults either have contempt for the education system dating back to when they were students confused about “why we need to know this stuff”, or simply just adults who, as you’ve said, already got theirs and now it’s just a numbers game. More chips for me. Not even thinking (or apparently caring) for a second about the long-term consequences of education-on-the-cheap. It certainly does have the unmistakeably foul stench of tea party.

If it’s any consolation, I do believe when the black man leaves the White House, a lot of wind will come out of those tea partying sails.

While the far right loved them some Vince Foster conspiracy theories, you really have to look at what launched their craziness into the stratosphere—and it wasn’t Hillary nosing into a man’s world. It was that dark-faced young man from Chicago. It’s my prediction they’ll take it down from “Dumbcon 5″ to perhaps”Dumbcon 3”.

With a few rare exceptions school performance is directly related to the wealth (or lack of) of the district. Clarence schools are not “good”, the district is simply fortunate to have a wealthy demographic and student body. This nonsense of “good schools” versus bad schools should be put to rest, the way to improve school performance is to reduce the great disparity in wealth that continues to undermine our schools and our society.

By the same token, there are plenty of horrible rich students in good districts, and plenty of terrific poor students in bad districts. It is undeniable, however, that if you divest from the schools and increase class sizes, abandon mental health services, and eliminate extracurriculars, programs, music, and sports, you’re going to have an objectively worse school district, regardless of the community’s demographics.

Poorer districts carry a much greater burden because of the extreme concentration of poverty. Poverty breeds dysfunction and that negatively impacts school performance metrics. I agree there are plenty of terrific students in poor districts, my own experience with the BPS bears that out. Buffalo Public continues to turn out many of the regions best and brightest despite the challenges, the media and public discourse ignores that fact and instead dwells on the negatives. My point is schools are a reflection of the community, we need to address the issue of poverty first, the rest will follow. Any other efforts to improve school performance will be futile. I think this whole bad school/good school debate is being used by those with an agenda to privatize and profit from the education system.

The Clarence School District is objectively “good”, regardless of how you want to define it, or the socioeconomic underpinnings of its perceived and actual success(es). It produces consistently good results, writ large. (YMMV).

I’m not pontificating here about the problems that befall poorer districts.
What I’m saying is that it’s one thing to have a “bad” district due to organic issues such as poverty and dysfunction, and it’s another to deliberately dismantle a “good” district through malicious divestiture.

In the end, the result is the same: a crap public education system that is susceptible to calls for privatization or abolition, and that’s what people like Lisa Thrun, Paul Stephen, Noel Dill, and Carl Paladino are looking to do in Clarence and in Buffalo.

I didn’t miss your point and agree this privatization and divesture push is a real problem. I just get tired of hearing about the “good” schools (read white and suburban) versus “bad” schools (read city and minority). Clarence schools aren’t really better than Buffalo, Clarence just enjoys the tremendous advantage of wealth.
My own children have attended PS#17, PS #51, Olmsted, City Honors, McKinley, DaVinci, and Our Lady of Black Rock. My youngest is presently at Hutch Tech, all my children received a quality education and went on to become successful adults. This comes as a revelation to many, the image of Buffalo Public is distorted and demeaned on a regular basis. This misinformation limits the potential of my city and impacts our ability to attract more families.
There is a certain arrogance in this Clarence is better mentality. Segregation by income limits efforts for real reform, out of sight out of mind, there is no incentive to address the problem of poverty as long as some are able to insulate themselves from it. I realize this is a little off subject, just my two sense.

I never said Clarence schools are “better” than Buffalo’s, or anywhere else’s. I said that Clarence schools are “good”, “strong”, “quality”, and “highly ranked”, as compared to all schools – rich and poor.

Clarence is one of the wealthiest towns in Erie County; it’s not that it can’t afford quality schools with adequate staff, it’s just decided not to. Yet the equation that made Clarence so attractive over the last couple of decades – quality, top-ranked schools with relatively low taxes – is being adversely affected

It’s the senior citizens that live in Stephens property at Rock Oak Estates that are the ones that are voting for Worling. Mr. Stephen has been giving them hot dogs and such and dragging the candidate around. On election morning Stephen is hosting a pancake breakfast and then driving these senior citizens to the polls to vote for his candidate.

Of course better education diminishes poverty but there are two big problems with that argument. Children raised in poverty usually do not have the support, stability, or role models necessary to excel at school. That dysfunction perpetuates itself, we can lay blame or point fingers but that is the present reality.
The other problem is our economy requires a large number of low skilled or semi skilled workers to keep the whole thing in motion. Not everyone can become a professional. All workers should be paid a fair and decent wage, economies grow fastest from the bottom up. We could stimulate our economy, create more taxpayers, and have less need for government assistance if labor was rewarded and shared in some of the profit that now is concentrated at the top.

The last paragraph reminds me of the next societal shit fight coming down the pike. Young people entering the workforce are fed the line that their money is being robbed from them via social security, because after all it won’t be there for them. Meanwhile the “I got mine crowd” would have you believe they are being robbed. In my world as an empty nester I gladly pay for a service I have no need for because A) I dearly hope another kid gets the chance my son had. And B) It’s the fucking right thing to do. I will probably have forty years of home ownership, forty years of paying school taxes, and thirteen years of reaping that benefit.